What Could Possibly Go Wrong (The Chronicles of St Mary's Book 6) Read online

  It was interesting to watch them. They were terribly polite to each other to begin with, which was disconcerting, but that wore off quite quickly and relations soon deteriorated to normal as they scornfully rejected each other’s proposals in favour of their own plans.

  In my mind, I had already decided that North and Lingoss would probably work alone. North wouldn’t want to share credit and Lingoss was naturally independent. Atherton and Sykes might work together. Hoyle, even after seven weeks, was still unknown territory.

  I stayed with them for about half an hour, just in case anyone had any questions or there was a fistfight – they didn’t and there wasn’t – and as they began to build their data stacks, I left them to it. There was the faint possibility there would be a bloodbath as soon as my back was turned, but they had to learn to work with each other sometime.

  I was in my office, formulating the questions for Friday’s examination, when Markham wandered in.

  ‘Can I have a word, Max?’

  ‘Sure. What’s the problem?’

  He wandered around the office, reading old notices on my board and fiddling with my calendar before coming to a halt in front of my desk.

  ‘Do you remember – last year – our little unpleasantness at Old St Pauls?’

  ‘I do, yes.’

  No need to say any more. None of us would ever forget our little unpleasantness at Old St Paul’s during the Great Fire of London. The entire History Department had been ambushed by Clive Ronan and Isabella Barclay and trapped in the burning cathedral. Sands had been left unconscious. Schiller murdered. And that wasn’t the end of it. Events had rumbled on, culminating in my being shot at our Open Day.

  He said nothing. More was obviously required from me.

  ‘Yes, I do remember it, but we’ve had the Security Section on every salvage operation since then and there haven’t been any further problems. Have there?’

  ‘No, but that isn’t what I was talking about. We’ve missed something. We’ve been so busy ensuring something like that could never happen again that we haven’t given any thought to how it managed to occur in the first place.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m not with you.’

  He turned from the window.

  ‘How did they know we’d be at St Paul’s? On that date. In that place. How did they know?’

  ‘Well, I …’ I stopped. It hit me like a blow. How had Barclay and Ronan known where and when we’d be? With all of History out there – how had they known? How could they have known?

  ‘I – I don’t know.’

  But I did know. I just didn’t want to say it. To think it, even.

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘Are you saying …?’

  ‘Yes, I am. There’s no other explanation. Someone tipped Ronan off.’

  ‘Someone here. From St Mary’s?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘Easy enough. Ronan hooked up with Barclay. Why not someone here as well?’

  It came out as a whisper. I almost couldn’t bear to put the thought into words. ‘Who? Who could it possibly be?’

  ‘No idea. Virtually everyone was involved in the Old St Paul’s assignment and certainly everyone in the unit knew about it. It could be anyone.’

  I clutched at a straw. ‘Thirsk knew. It could have been someone from Thirsk.’

  ‘They didn’t know the coordinates. Only someone here could have accessed those and passed them on.’

  I stared at him. ‘Do you know what this means?’

  ‘I do, yes. It means we have a traitor here.’

  I did what I always do in a crisis. I went to see Peterson who took one look at me and asked his current assistant, Miss Lee, to make the tea. She immediately disappeared out of the door on some unknown errand somewhere.

  ‘I don’t think you’re doing it right,’ I said, smugly. ‘My Mrs Shaw brings me chocolate biscuits as well.’

  ‘I blame her previous owner,’ he said, putting the kettle on. ‘Why are you here? Have all your trainees run away? I have to say, I was hoping they’d last a little longer than this. My bet was eight weeks.’

  I dropped into the visitor’s chair and baldly recounted my conversation with Markham.

  He handed me a mug and said thoughtfully, ‘Well I wondered …’

  ‘You never said anything.’

  ‘What could I say? No one else said anything. Dr Bairstow, especially, never said anything. I concluded I was an idiot and forgot about it.’

  ‘Well, you got one thing right.’ He threw a paperclip at me. ‘If there was anything to it then surely the Boss would have said something.’

  ‘Not necessarily. Last year was all about putting St Mary’s back together again. The last thing he would want would be rumours that someone in this unit was tipping off Clive Ronan. Can you imagine the way people would look at each other?’

  I sipped my tea. ‘Should we say something to him, perhaps?’

  ‘I don’t think so. If there’s any possibility of it being true then he’ll already be all over it like a tramp on a kipper. He won’t want us getting underfoot. If he wants any input then he’ll ask for it. But we could keep our eyes open.’

  ‘For what? I asked, bitterly. ‘It’s more than six months ago now. If there ever was any evidence, it’s long since been disposed of.’

  ‘Maybe we could look at motive. Why someone would do such a thing.’

  ‘Revenge. Jealousy.’ I stopped suddenly.

  He finished it for me. ‘Money.’

  My first impulse was to deny it. My second was that he might be right. We’re not well paid. In Markham’s case, what with all the Deductions from Wages for Damages Incurred forms he’s signed over the years, he’s barely paid at all. And money is a powerful motive.

  ‘No, surely the first thing the Boss would have done is to check everyone’s bank accounts.’

  He sighed patiently. ‘Max, there are many ways of concealing a large amount of money other than shoving it in a bank account.’

  ‘I bow to your superior knowledge.’

  I was joking, but the implications were frightening me.

  He finished his tea. ‘What have you done with them?’

  ‘Who?’

  He grinned at me and signalled downstairs with his eyes.

  ‘Shit!’ I leaped from my chair. I had forgotten all about my trainees.

  ‘Please promise me you and Leon will never have kids. There won’t be a shop in Rushford that hasn’t got a tiny Maxwell outside, crying in the cold, forgotten and abandoned in her pram.’

  ‘Very funny. Can I have my old job back?’

  ‘No. Close the door behind you.’

  I raced back, half convinced there would be blood up the walls by now, but when I peered in through what dear old Mr Strong always referred to as a viewing aperture, they were all still working, heads bent over their data stacks.

  I went for some lunch.

  I spent the afternoon compiling the Friday afternoon examination questions. We’d all been through this. Now, however, I was the one setting the questions. Trying to find the balance between testing their knowledge without being too harsh. It’s a fine line. If they can’t handle the workload then now is the time to find out, but if I were too harsh, then in forty-eight hours I’d have no trainees left at all.

  At 14.30, my assistant, the lovely Mrs Shaw, brought me a mug of tea and a ton of paperwork. I signed and sipped.

  At 15.00 on the dot, I was walking through the classroom door. Whether they had finished or not, it was presentation time.

  I had been right. North had worked alone. Sykes and Atherton had worked together and surprisingly, after a while, it seemed the conventional Mr Hoyle and the unconventional Miss Lingoss had combined their efforts as well.

  I made myself comfortable and we began.

  Not surprisingly, they’d all opted for a period of around the end of the 18th dynasty, one of the most famous and powerful dynasties in all of Egypt’s long history.
Famous Pharaohs included Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh, Akhenaton, the heretic pharaoh, and of course, Tutankhamun. Egypt was at the very height of its power and influence. By the end of the 20th dynasty, around one hundred years later, the ancient civilisation of Egypt had begun its long decline and the Valley of the Kings was slowly abandoned, the tombs desecrated, destroyed, or forgotten.

  All of them had selected sites looking down into the Valley. North, Sykes, and Atherton had selected the south-eastern slopes and Hoyle and Lingoss had gone for the hillside to the south-west, arguing that this would give them a better chance of identifying the owners of the large number of anonymous tombs in that area. Both sides defended their position vigorously and we all enjoyed twenty-five minutes of spirited academic debate and abuse.

  Other than that, the two scenarios were reasonably similar – as they should be – with only minor differences in equipment and allocation of personnel. Naturally, everyone had placed themself in charge. I could have appointed any of them as mission controller, but out of curiosity, I nominated Lingoss. I wanted to see what she could do. She’d get some grief from North who seemed quite shocked that she hadn’t been chosen and it would be interesting to see how that manifested itself and how Lingoss would deal with it.

  I passed the details over to Peterson who said, ‘Rather you than me,’ but allocated me Roberts and Sands to help spread the supervisory load. From there I wandered down to Markham who was drooping with boredom behind a paper-laden desk and welcomed me with enthusiasm.

  Since we would be well away from the areas patrolled by the Medjay - the official Egyptian police, who patrolled the Necropolis and the Valley itself, he agreed we didn’t need the full might and majesty of the entire Security Section and we settled for Markham himself, Randall, and Evans.

  That made a total of eleven people, plus all the equipment, scanners, laser measuring devices, recorders, whatever. That meant at least three pods, probably four, which was just asking for trouble half way up a mountain, so we settled for our big transport pod, TB2.

  I’ve already said that pods are our centre of operations. We live and work in them. I usually go on to say how small and squalid they are, but that’s not true in the case of TB2, which is big and squalid and, despite being of fairly recent construction, and to my certain knowledge never hosted any sort of cabbage derivative in its entire life, still manages to smell of boiled brassica. It does, however, have the benefit of a large working area, should we be overtaken by sunstroke, dust storms, plagues of locusts, rains of frogs, or whatever the ancient kingdom of Egypt felt like throwing at us. Actually, I’ve been to Egypt before, and it’s quite pleasant. So long as you stay away from the Nile crocodiles, of course, and what were the odds of finding one of those half way up a mountain?

  We spent two days being instructed in the use of geological mapping and surveying equipment by the Technical Section. And how to repair it. It would seem they had very little confidence in our ability not to break anything.

  We assembled outside TB2 and I surveyed the troops. We were all dressed in desert camouflage. In contrast to our well-worn gear, the trainees’ fatigues looked stiff and uncomfortable, although they’d had the sense to break their boots in. I remembered Markham telling me that when he’d first started here, they’d used the old-style boots, and the only way you could soften them up enough to get them to bend was to reverse a lorry over them. Which, he had gone on to inform me, had led to the unpleasantness with the former wall outside Hawking and an irate Major Guthrie.

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘So there’s no truth in the claim that Randall told North the best way to soften them up is to pee on them.’

  Randall, standing nearby, grinned. ‘I made the offer,’ he said. ‘She turned me down, can you believe, and I even told her she didn’t have to take them off if she didn’t want to.’

  I tried to imagine North standing quietly by while Randall peed on her boots, failed, and ushered them into the pod.

  ‘All laid in,’ said Dieter, running an eye over the console. ‘Who’s driving?’

  ‘Me,’ said Sands, stowing his bag in a locker. Dieter had the grace not to look too relieved, but we all knew it was far too early in their training to let the trainees drive.

  I stood against the lockers, out of the way, and watched them get on with it. Roberts did the head-count and Sands began to flick switches. Dieter wished us luck and left.

  ‘Everyone set?’ said Sands.

  I heard the sound of five collective breaths being drawn. Here we go. If anyone was going to panic …

  ‘Computer, initiate jump.’

  And the world went white.

  We landed with only a very gentle bump, but almost immediately, we tilted. Someone gasped but before we all descended into full-blown panic or slid down the mountain, or both, one of the hydraulic legs automatically extended, and we were level again.

  Sands busied himself shutting things down.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Who can tell me what just happened?’

  As usual, North was ready to speak, but was pipped at the post by Lingoss.

  ‘We landed successfully,’ she said, ‘but the terrain wasn’t level and one of the legs extended to keep us stable.’

  ‘Correct. Can anyone tell me what happens next?’

  Again, North drew breath, but Sykes got in before her.

  ‘We should carry out safety checks.’

  ‘In the form of?’

  North was speaking even before I’d finished.

  ‘We should check the readings and use the computer to confirm we are where and when we should be. We should angle all the cameras to check for any possible hazards outside the pod. We should check the proximity alerts. We should each inspect our equipment and carry out a com check. On permission from Mr Sands, we exit the pod.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  She shook her head. They all looked at each other, mystified.

  I sighed. ‘Welcome to the glamorous world of the historian, people. Yes, everything Miss North has said is correct, however …’

  I paused. They still looked mystified.

  ‘So you’ve all been to the loo, have you? Checked you have enough water? Applied your sun cream? You have, presumably, noticed the outside temperature?’

  Sheepishly, they shuffled off. You have to drill these things into people. They must be made aware it’s the little things that could get them killed. An unfortunately timed comfort break at Thermopylae had once nearly changed the course of History.

  Finally, they were ready.

  ‘In your own time, Mr Sands.’

  The ramp came down and they got their first glimpse of a whole new world.

  I gave them a moment to get their heads around it. Everyone’s first jump is a special occasion. There is nothing in the world to compare with the moment you exit the pod and take your first look around at a new time and a new place, and realise that this is what all that training has been about. The first jump used to be a solo affair with a few hair-raising scenarios thrown in, just to sort the historians from the boys, but that was something else I’d discontinued. In terms of time and cost, we simply couldn’t afford to get that far in the training schedule only to have someone bottle out right on the verge of qualification.

  Those of us who’d done this before all grinned at each other, stood back, and watched their faces. Just for once, they were simultaneously struck dumb. They stared about them, blinking in the hot, hard sunshine. We were three and a half thousand years ago and sometimes, you need a moment to process that fact.

  The red rocks around us were silhouetted darkly against a gloriously blue sky. Above our heads, an eagle screamed faintly as it was mobbed by other birds and climbed higher to escape them.

  I looked around us. Our site was perfect. From our vantage point, we could look directly down into the Valley of the Kings – or, to give it its correct name, the Great and Majestic Necropolis of the Millions of Years of the Pharaoh, Life, Strength, Health, in
the West of Thebes. That’s the Egyptians for you. Brilliant builders – crap at naming things. I think we’ll stick with Valley of the Kings.

  We had arrived – we hoped – at the end of the 18th Dynasty, at the height of tomb building. Looking down, the area teemed with people, all of them beavering away in the hot sunshine. Some wore loincloths, others wore short tunics. Most had covered their heads, either against the sun or to mop up the sweat.

  In the distance, the Nile glittered in the late-autumn sunlight, cutting a broad swathe through the desert. A hundred little boats – feluccas – plied their trade. Those travelling south to north were using the flow of the Nile; those travelling in the opposite direction had raised their triangular sails.

  A wide band of cultivated land ran along each riverbank, gloriously green against the desert red. The dividing line between the two was quite abrupt. It was perfectly possible to stand with one leg in the Black Land (the fertile river plain) and the other in the Red Land (the desert). The flood season – inundation – was ending. Patches of standing water reflected the sky. Sowing would soon begin.

  The air was crystal clear up here and I could make out individual areas of cultivation, groves of palm trees, irrigation channels, irrigation devices – or shadufs, small buildings, even a line of camels being taken down to drink. A flight of large, white birds flew gracefully over the Nile and alighted on a sandbank.

  In contrast, the Valley itself was thick with dust, kicked up by the feet of beasts and men. Work was progressing simultaneously in several areas and even at this distance, I could hear the ringing tap-tap-tap of chisel on rock and hear the occasional shout or a donkey braying a protest. Piles of stone blocks stood around at regular intervals, waiting to be dressed or incorporated into current building schemes.

  The ever-present dust, however, could not conceal what looked like scores and scores of tomb entrances. Best of all, in the centre of the Valley, at its lowest point, exactly where it should be, a fresh scar indicated the entrance to the tomb of Tutankhamun. We had jumped to exactly the right time. The Valley was still occupied – extensive tomb robbing had not yet led to the tomb entrances being concealed either deliberately, or by Nature herself. The presence of the feared Medjay was sufficient deterrent against thieves, but that worked both ways. There would be patrols everywhere. We would have to be careful.